Performance-based Accountability Research Articles

Comparison to Perceptions of Teachers and Head Teachers about Accountability Measures for Public School Improvement in Punjab

Every government faces the pressure of quality and accountability as it has become an international agenda. Countries are shaping their policies according to the interest of stakeholders in globalization and international competition. They plan to establish high-performing school systems. Developed and developing countries are also struggling with this movement to ensure the quality and accountability of schools. Different accountability approaches are in practice. Mixed methods research design opted for using an interview protocol and sur\vey with 2220 participants from public elementary schools. A pragmatic approach selected for reliability, and validity was assured while using a triangulation design. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were performed for the analysis of data. It concluded that educational accountability is a challenging job. Data revealed an ambiguity in the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders, teachers, head teachers, parents, students, and district administration. Assign duties may be clarified, and responsible persons may be considered answerable. Some policies are there, but these are in practice in a different sense. Implementation of policies may be authenticated. When students' achievement is considered the main drive of school effectiveness, and schools are rated accountable for results to nurture positive change. More than achievement in numbers alone is required for quality education, as this can easily be achieved through misreporting. For quality and improvement over time, some prime features like creativity and higher-order thinking skills are mandatory. In different situations, there may be other yardsticks to judge students' personality traits like teamwork, commitment, and emotional adjustment. School teachers and head teachers had recommended replacing test-based accountability with performance-based accountability to amplify student learning and success.

Making teachers by policy? The case of teacher evaluation in Norwegian education

ABSTRACT The reported study investigates the emergence of teacher evaluation (TE) in Norwegian green papers between 1988 and 2019. We examine how knowledge dissemination and discourses in Norwegian official reports shape suggestions for TE and discuss implications for how teachers are “made by policy”. Guided by Bacchi’s (2009) approach to critical discourse analysis, “What’s the problem represented to be?” (WPR), we explore where problem representations and their underpinning assumptions are produced and disseminated, and how they invoke new arguments and discursive and subjectification effects. The study contributes new knowledge on the origins of TE as a policy tool for governing Norwegian education in general, and teachers more specifically. Across time and irrespective of government coalitions, we identify the OECD as a main contributor to new problem representations and display how proposals for TE policies based on performance-based accountability (PBA) promote new discourses on teacher professionalism. Implications for research, policy and practice are discussed.

Teaching as affective labour in a datafied world: a scoping review of the relationship between performance-based accountability and teachers’ emotions

Research has shown that in many contexts, the transformation of the public sector associated with new public management (NPM) reforms and performance-based accountability (PBA) has had profound implications for public sector workers' practices, identities and emotional experiences. Focusing on the education sector, in this paper we aim to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between PBA policies and teachers’ emotions by conducting a scoping review of the scientific literature. Our review, which is based on a final sample of 63 articles published between the years 2000-2021 obtained from the SCOPUS database, identifies two main bodies of research. The first deals with an examination of teachers’ emotions and shows how PBA is a crucial part of a changing professional environment that accentuates and/or modifies feelings and emotions already inherent to the teaching profession. The focal point of the second strand of research is the effect of PBA on teachers’ emotions; here, we identify research exploring the emotional effects of PBA, as well as the mechanisms behind different emotional experiences, how teachers deal with emotions emerging from PBA policies and a number of factors that intensify or weaken the emotional impact of PBA. On the basis of our review, limitations of existing research and gaps in the understanding of the relationship between PBA and teachers’ emotions are identified and promising lines of future research formulated.

Teaching as affective labour in a datafied world: a scoping review of the relationship between performance-based accountability and teachers' emotions

Teaching as affective labour in a datafied world: a scoping review of the relationship between performance-based accountability and teachers' emotions

Exploring the factors influencing teachers’ instructional data use with electronic data systems

Teachers' use of student assessment data to improve teaching practices has received increased attention for quality education. Many factors are found to be crucial to teachers' instructional data use. More recently, the integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education makes student assessment data increasingly accessible through electronic systems. However, new and emerging issues relating to using ICTs are inadequately examined in existing research on teachers' instructional data use. To address the gap, this study investigated the factors influencing teachers' instructional data use involving the use of electronic data systems. A total of 243 teachers from twelve middle schools in northern China participated in this study. Our findings reveal that in order to promote teachers' instructional data use with ICTs, schools need to pay appropriate attention to performance-based accountability policies, cultivate supportive relationships among teachers, and develop teachers' positive attitude towards data use; meanwhile, it is important to improve the accessibility of data systems and enhance teachers’ data literacy and ICT literacy.

Researching the prospects for change that COVID disruption has brought to high stakes testing and accountability systems

This paper explores the disruption that COVID has brought to the normal functioning of performance-based accountability systems and asks whether this has created new possibilities for those organising against the use of high stakes testing in education. Drawing on a sequence of research projects exploring primary schools’ responses to the pandemic in England during 2020-21, this article considers the ways in which the pandemic creates new conditions for dismantling high stakes testing and accountability regimes, and the role of research in making the case for change.

Performance-based accountability: exploring Ghanaian teachers perception of the influence of large-scale testing on teaching and learning

ABSTRACT Undergirded by “economic theory of the principal–agent problem”, the study investigated secondary school teachers’ perception of the influence of large-scale testing accountability on teaching and learning. Cross-sectional survey design was used. Simple random sampling was also employed to select 200 teachers for this study. The exploratory factor analysis results showed that although large-scale testing accountability serves as a motivational factor for teachers to be more productive, it puts pressure on teachers and students. Teachers reported teaching to the test (i.e. washback) and spending a lot of instructional time preparing students for the test. Teachers suggested that large-scale testing results should not be seen as the sole basis for teacher effectiveness. Rather, they indicated that large-scale testing results should be used to foster equitable distribution of educational resources and support teachers’ professional development to enhance teaching and learning. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Teacher autonomy in the age of performance-based accountability: A review based on teaching profession regulatory models (2017-2020)

In recent decades, the governance of educational systems has experienced dramatic changes in many countries. Schools have been given more autonomy whilst being held increasingly accountable at the central level through standardized testing and other forms of external evaluation. The mechanisms of performance-based accountability (PBA) and the consequences attached to test results vary. In high-stakes systems, teachers’ careers are more directly connected to students’ performance, and low performing schools might risk closure, whereas in lower-stakes systems, the official administrative consequences of accountability for school actors are more symbolic than material. The main aim of this paper is to understand the impact of different forms of PBA on teachers’ work from a comparative perspective. Most research on this topic is based on single-context case studies, which makes it difficult to understand the impact of policy factors and professional contexts in teachers’ decisions and autonomy. To address this challenge, we review recent investigations (2017-2020) on the topic and compare their findings in different teachers' regulatory contexts. The review includes 101 articles from the SCOPUS and Web of Science databases. We find that evidence on the impact of PBA on teachers’ perceptions and beliefs are variegated, and that the implications of PBA on teachers’ autonomy does not only depend on the level of accountability stakes, but on teachers’ professional regulation.  

Institutionalization of results-based budgeting in the public sector: political and economic pressures

PurposeThis paper aims to explain the interaction of external and internal influences in the imposition of results-based budgeting (RBB) in a public sector organization, subsequent to public sector reforms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses an explanatory case study of a state-imposed RBB system, drawing evidence from in-depth interviews, document analysis, and direct observation. The paper draws on Alsharari's (2013) contextual framework which synthesizes three approaches to analyzing institutional change: Dillard et al.'s (2004) New Institutional Sociology (NIS) framework for analyzing externalities; Burns and Scapens' (2000) framework inspired by old institutional economics (OIE) for internal processes of change and Hardy (1996) power and politics mobilization model. In addition, Pettigrew's (1987) contextual framework is used for its holistic incorporation of different perspectives and to integrate theoretical perspectives.FindingsThe findings show that Jordan's National Reform Agenda represented a turning towards the New Public Management (NPM) model, following entrenched poor state budget performance. The findings also show that NPM ideas, such as results orientation and performance-based accountability, are invoked in response to common economic and social pressures, such as budget insufficiency and public antipathy to government service provision, as well as the pressures of globalization. Institutional analysis confirms the “path-dependent” and evolutionary nature of accounting change implemented in Jordan's customs agency. The study also concludes, from observation of the organization's work routines and practices, that the implementation of accounting change was not merely a symbolic innovation.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has significant implications for politicians, economists, academics and government leaders as it provides fieldwork evidence about the role of RBB in the economy and public policy. Changes at the political and economic level, particularly with respect to the introduction of the fiscal reforms and customs modernization projects, have resulted in changes to structures and systems at the organizational level, particularly the implementation of RBB. This study is subject to normal limitations. The role of legitimate power in the organizational change process can be subject to further examination, especially in the public sectors of developing countries. A longitudinal study could also affirm the institutional analysis of the present case study.Originality/valueThe study contributes to accounting literature by providing further understanding and a thick explanation of the dynamics of accounting change in the Jordanian public sector. It utilizes a contextual framework for studying accounting change that attempts to overcome the limitations of single-dimension theories, such as NIS and OIE, by integrating levels of analysis. The case study provides insight into how internal dynamics interact with external pressures and recognizes the organizational field as a link between political, economic and organizational levels. It more directly addresses the dynamics of emergence, diffusion and implementation of new accounting criteria and practices.

Professionalism in the era of accountability: Role discrepancy and responses among teachers in the Netherlands

The roles and identities of professionals have undergone significant transformation in an ever-globalising world shaped by neoliberal values. In the field of education, standardisation and outcome-based quality measures have become the norm. Teachers are held accountable through their students' results, with their work subject to ongoing surveillance (performance-based accountability). This has changed the nature of teachers' tasks, and what it means to be a "good teacher". Based on 20 teacher interviews across six primary schools in the Netherlands, this study examines teachers' practices and beliefs, asking: do they experience role discrepancy? What responses do we see as a result? And, what does this reveal about teachers' sense of professionalism today? Findings show that all teachers experience the pressure of high workloads and the need to prioritise tasks. Whereas a small minority of respondents understand performative tasks as having a crucial function of supporting student learning and achievement, others experienced a discrepancy between these performative tasks and the tasks they believed to be at the heart of good teaching. Confronted with this, teachers responded in different ways; either incorporating all tasks into their schedule, or feeling forced to choose between them. Beyond this, findings indicate that teachers' understandings of key aspects of the profession, such as autonomy, are changing in response to the policy environment. This supports conceptualisations of professions and professionalism as not only "being changed by" external reform, but changing from within.

Re-conceptualising education policy trajectories in a globalised world: lessons from a multi-level comparison of accountability in France and Quebec

ABSTRACT This article aims to show the value of the concept of policy trajectory to compare, from a long-term perspective, the transformations of education policies in the context of globalisation. After discussing the scope and limitations of the analyses of the concept in the literature – descriptive, sequential, metaphorical and building on the works of Stephen Ball –, we propose, our own conceptualisation. This regards policy trajectory as a double shift in time and space and understood as the result of different processes of path dependency, translation and bricolage. The forms of this trajectory depend on the educational orders at work at different levels of school systems, and not only at the global level. To illustrate this approach, we draw on a study which compared performance-based accountability policies in France and Quebec. Despite some challenges, this approach has the merit of proposing a fruitful theoretical framework for studying and comparing policy implementation.

Performance-based accountability systems cross-nationally: learning by comparing

Performance-based accountability systems cross-nationally: learning by comparing

"SEEKING PERFORMANCE-BASED ACCOUNTABILITY IN ITALIAN PUBLIC HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS"

"Using content and cluster analysis and considering a time span of five years, this study examines the adoption and compliance level of Performance-Based Accountability (PBA) in the Italian Local Healthcare Authorities (LHAs) under the Legislative Decree no. 150/2009. The results showed a barely sufficient level of PBA compliance. Higher levels of citizen involvement in PBA processes, the commitment of Regions, and integration with other accountability systems are three conditions for improving the effectiveness and usefulness for stakeholders of this NPM reform for LHAs."

Opportunities to Address Health Disparities in Performance-Based Accountability and Payment Programs.

Opportunities to Address Health Disparities in Performance-Based Accountability and Payment Programs.

Performance-Based Accountability and Teacher Emotions: Role of Zhongyong Thinking.

Teachers’ emotions may be affected by structural reforms of education that emphasizes performance-based accountability (PBA) and by individual psychological processes like thinking style, but there is a lack of research concerning the relationship between the three factors. In this study, thus, we attempted to test the influence of PBA on teacher emotions and to examine whether the relationship was moderated by a zhongyong thinking (ZYT) style in a Chinese context. A sample of 402 primary and secondary schoolteachers from Hubei, Liaoning, and Beijing in China participated in this study. Structural equation modeling was applied to develop moderation models. The results demonstrated that PBA is a singificant factor with respect to teachers’ joy, sadness/frustration, anger, and fear, as related to their job of teaching, but not love of their profession. Moreover, the ZYT style may moderate the relationship between PBA and joy.

Does performance-based accountability impact how non-profit directors perceive organizational performance? Insights from rational planning

ABSTRACT Although the non-profit marketization literature argues that governments’ performance-based accountability demands can hinder non-profit organizational performance, the rational planning literature suggests a more positive yet indirect impact. To unravel the mechanisms at play for those steering their organization, we investigate (1) if performance-based accountability can alter how non-profit directors’ perceive organizational performance and (2) if such relationship is mediated by rational planning inspired practices. Results from structural equation modelling on two-wave survey data among 297 non-profit directors in Flemish non-profits confirm that management tool use and performance measurement are central in explaining how performance-based accountability impacts subjective performance.

Enacting performance-based accountability in a Southern European school system: between administrative and market logics

Performance-based accountability (PBA) policies are increasingly adopted in a wide range of education systems in order to reform school governance and to improve students’ results and schools’ performance. Countries around the world have been implementing national large-scale assessments to make school actors more accountable and responsible for students’ results. This policy model has been generalized in countries with different administrative traditions, including those with a short tradition in New Public Management. This is the case in Spain, where PBA has been adopted unevenly in different regions, with Madrid being one of the earliest adopters. In recent decades, Madrid has developed a model that combines administrative test-based accountability with a system of broad parental school choice, which also facilitates the activation of market forms of accountability. However, the combination and interaction between market and administrative forms of accountability is understudied. This paper adopts a policy enactment perspective to analyze, through a case study approach, the interaction of administrative and market forms of accountability and its enactment at the school level. The case study is based on a set of 41 semi-structured interviews with teachers, principals, and school inspectors in a sample of eight schools in Madrid, combined with document analysis of school educational projects and improvement plans. The evidence suggests that administrative and market forms of accountability tend to generate dynamics of interdependence, resulting in increasing external pressures which schools tend to address with superficial responses, including teaching to the test, or second-order competition between schools.

How are the ‘losers’ of the school accountability system constructed in Chile, the USA and England?

ABSTRACT Performance-based accountability systems that rank schools based on their effectiveness produce ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. Substantial evidence has pointed to the (side)effects of these classifications, particularly in the most disadvantaged communities. Whilst previous studies have compared schools under different effectiveness categories within and between countries, this qualitative study takes a cross-case comparison approach to analyse education policies, grey literature and previous research evidence to explore the mechanisms that construct ‘failing’ schools in three notable high-stakes accountability systems worldwide: Chile, the USA and England. After describing (1) the identification and classification of ‘failing’ schools; (2) the instruments used to justify these classifications; and (3) who make these judgements, we conclude that the construction of ‘failing’ schools serves the competition and differentiation required for maintaining neoliberal hierarchical and unequal market-oriented regimes. Instead of disciplining only ‘failing’ schools, these labels also provide a caution for the whole school system.

To align or not to align: the enactment of accountability and data-use in disadvantaged school contexts

Despite the growing number of researches about performance-based accountability (PBA) in education, there is still scarce evidence on the mediating role of subjective variables (e.g., perceived pressure and alignment to PBA mandates) in the enactment of PBA in socially disadvantaged contexts. This is paradoxical because marginalized schools are usually those that are on probation and have to cope with the threat of sanctions more frequently. Existing investigations on PBA enactment have put increasing attention to the role of situated and material contexts, but there is still limited knowledge on how subjective variables can mediate policy enactment processes and enable the adoption of different school responses. To address these gaps, the article aims to explore how the perceived accountability pressure, the school performative culture, and meaning-making processes at the school level are mediating the enactment of PBA policies in disadvantaged schools. At the theoretical level, the study is informed by sense-making and policy enactment frameworks. Methodologically speaking, the investigation uses a comparative case study approach based on two extreme cases, which have been selected on the basis of a factorial analysis that combines both survey and secondary data. The extreme cases represent two different scenarios, which, despite operating in similar situated contexts, are characterized by having opposite levels of perceived pressure and alignment with the performative culture. The case studies combine survey data (n = 39) with documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with the management team and teachers (n = 7). The findings show that subjective variables, in interaction with other contextual factors, can exacerbate or inhibit PBA regulatory pressures and trigger diverging school responses.

Coping with performance expectations: towards a deeper understanding of variation in school principals’ responses to accountability demands

In recent decades, performance-based accountability (PBA) has become an increasingly popular policy instrument to ensure educational actors are responsive to and assume responsibility for achieving centrally defined learning goals. Nonetheless, studies report mixed results with regard to the impact of PBA on schools’ internal affairs and instructional practices. With the aim of contributing to the understanding of the social mechanisms and processes that induce particular school responses, this paper reports on a study that examines how Norwegian principals perceive, interpret, and translate accountability demands. The analysis is guided by the policy enactment perspective and the sociological concept of “reactivity”, and relies on 23 in-depth interviews with primary school principals in nine urban municipalities in Norway. The findings highlight three distinct response patterns in how principals perceive, interpret, and translate PBA demands: alignment, balancing multiple purposes, and symbolic responses. The study simultaneously shows how different manifestations of two social mechanisms form important explanatory factors to understand principals’ varying responses, while it is highlighted how the mechanisms are more likely to operate under particular conditions, which relate both to principals’ trajectories and views on education, and to school-specific characteristics and the local accountability regime. The study contributes to the accountability literature by showing how, even in the relative absence of material consequences and low levels of marketization, standardized testing and PBA can drive behavioral change, by reframing norms of good educational practice and by affecting how educators make sense of core aspects of their work.